


Cold

by TheOtherSarahJane



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drabble, Family Member Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOtherSarahJane/pseuds/TheOtherSarahJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prussia sensed something amiss the moment he woke up, but he never thought it could be his worst fear coming true...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

Prussia awoke to a quiet house.

As his eyes opened, he stretched and glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost noon.

Weird, he thought. West usually woke him up by now.

In his usual inelegant manner, Prussia clambered out of bed and let out a long yawn. He had probably just gone out somewhere, that was all.

But when he went out into the living room to check for a note on the door like West usually left him, there was nothing to indicate he was gone. His keys were still hanging up on the little hook in the entryway, his shoes still there on the rack. The door was locked and the mail keys were hung up as well, so he hadn’t simply stepped out to check the mail or run some other brief errand. Prussia frowned. Maybe he had just overslept badly—it was rare, but possible, right? Never mind the fact that he couldn’t remember a time when West had ever slept this late.

Or when the house ever seemed this quiet.

Slightly concerned now, Prussia made his way across the kitchen and down the hall to West’s room. He glanced into the study as he passed. It hadn’t been touched since last night.

He raised a hand to knock on West’s door, and gave three loud, sharp raps with his knuckles.

“West, you sleeping in there?” He called out. “It’s already noon.”

No response.

“West!” Prussia called, a bit more harshly. “Get up! Even I’m up before you, Christ.”

Still nothing. Everything remained still on the other side of the door.

A cold feeling began to slither its way down Prussia’s spine and knot itself within his gut. West was probably just sleeping heavily, he reasoned. Everything was fine.

He knocked, loudly and solidly, one last time.

“West, I’m coming in there unless you get up right now!” He called in, only to be met once again with silence. “Fine then! Jesus Christ, you must be sleeping like a log in there,” he muttered, and turned the doorknob.

As soon as the door opened enough for Prussia to catch a glimpse of his brother in bed, Prussia’s insides felt like they hit the floor. He had seen that look before.

No, he told himself, stepping over to West’s side. He was still in bed, lying completely still on his back, one arm outside the covers, like he slept every night.

But something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

“No,” Prussia muttered aloud. He tossed the thought out of his mind as quickly as it came. That wasn’t possible.

“Hey, West.” His voice came out as a croak no matter how hard he tried to steady it. He reached out and touched West’s shoulder.

It was cold.

Prussia sprang back. That knotted, cold feeling in his gut and his spine came back, hitting him like a semi truck. He could no longer keep the thoughts out of his mind. He had touched him. He had felt it.

West was dead.

“No,” he said aloud, but his voice only came out as a whisper. “West. West, please. West, just stop, you can’t just…”

His voice trailed off, and he inched forward, every muscle in his body shaking violently. He reached out and touched West’s shoulder again, and his fingers met with the same icy cold.

That was it. Prussia let out a howl, half anger, half despair, all disbelief, and suddenly his legs seemed too weak to hold him and he collapsed onto his knees by the bed. He grabbed onto West to try and support himself—onto his chest, his side, his shoulder, those strong and sturdy features that had always held him up and kept him well. With every grasp, his hand met cold stillness.

“No.” Prussia screamed out, angry tears beginning to fall from his eyes. “West, get up. You can’t fucking do this to me you can’t—”

His voice broke when a sob clogged his throat. Forcefully, he swallowed it down, and his voice ripped from his throat in tattered, rough yelps.

“You can’t,” he repeated over and over again. “You can’t, you can’t fucking do this, West, you can’t do this to me, get up, wake up…”

West never responded. His eyes were closed peacefully; there was no movement of breath in his chest or his throat. By now Prussia had begun to shake and jerk violently on top of him, still trying desperately to wake him, but his only responses were his arm falling limply to his side and his head, pale and lifeless, lolling sideways on his neck, staring at Prussia with those cold, serene, closed eyes.

Prussia stopped moving. He began to let out broken sobs as he circled his arms around his brother—still so cold, so cold—and his entire body again began shaking.

“No, no, he can’t, he can’t,” Prussia chanted to himself. “This can’t be it, this can’t be…”

Suddenly Prussia threw his head back and let out another angry howl.

“Fuck you!” He shouted up at he didn’t really know what. “Fuck you, he can’t go like this! He can’t leave me like this! He’s not gone, he’s not gonna leave, I’m not gonna fucking let him!”

“What is it?” He continued to scream, his voice broken and hoarse. “What do you want, huh? Do you want me instead? Because I swear to god I will, I swear I will, just not him, he can’t, not him…West…”

The last word drained into a whisper, and Prussia was once again overcome with sobs. He clutched West’s body close to him—it was beginning to feel warm, now, from his body heat, but that wasn’t enough, he still felt so lifeless, and so Prussia clung to him tighter, hoping that maybe, somehow, something would happen, maybe West would slowly wake up and ask what the hell he was doing and everything would be okay again. Even if it killed Prussia, that would be fine, just fine, his time had long been over anyway, but West, West…

“You can’t do this to me,” Prussia whispered through the tears coating his face. “You can’t, West, you’re so young…”

“I gave everything for you!” He suddenly screamed again, throwing his head back. “I did everything so that you could be strong and this—this is how you repay me? You fucking bitch!” He threw West down on the bed as forcefully as he could, screaming expletives and more and more pleas to just please, get up, he couldn’t do this to him, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He didn’t care how much noise he was making. Let the whole damned neighborhood hear. Let who whole goddamned world hear, because he had just lost his brother, his baby brother, and now he was really and truly alone.

After he didn’t know how long, Prussia’s voice was hoarse and he felt too drained to continue shouting. He sat collapsed by the bed, one arm back around West’s waist and one on his chest, both still horribly cold and silent. Tears were still slipping out of his eyes, but they were quiet now, and the only sound in the room was Prussia’s quiet hiccups and sobs.

Prussia couldn’t talk anymore. He couldn’t beg. He couldn’t do anything but sit there and hold onto his baby brother, begging something to come and take him away because now the last thing he cared about was gone. Dimly, he was aware of someone at the door, knocking, yelling, trying to get in, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying and he didn’t care anyway. He stayed where he was, letting the cold of West’s body seep into his, hoping that somehow staying with him would let them trade places.

But West never moved. His body never warmed. And no matter how long Prussia sat there, his life and his misery never left him.

…

Prussia sat still as death in the living room. Beer bottles and cans had piled high in the wastebasket and recycle, and he had long since stopped emptying either of them. Dust had begun to pile up everywhere, but Prussia could never seem to move himself to brush it off. Cards and condolences from friends, neighbors, no one he cared about and no one that really cared about him, were piled up and shoved away on the counter somewhere, and the house was dead and dark.  
West would have hated it.

Prussia tried to steel himself to move, but couldn’t. He could only stare straight ahead, just moving his arm enough to bring the taste of beer to his lips. He probably hadn’t stopped drinking in days, and the last time he had caught his reflection in the mirror he couldn’t stand to look at it.

West would be worrying about him. He always worried. But not anymore.

Sometimes France or Spain or even Hungary came to check on him. But they all took one look into his eyes and then refused to meet them again for the rest of the time they stayed. Half the time he ended up lashing out at them. The other half he couldn’t bring himself to react at all.

He didn’t care about them. He didn’t care about anything except drinking himself to sleep.

He knew he had grown thinner. He knew his eyes had circles beneath them, and that his face was gaunt and shadowed. He didn’t care.

West would have been so worried to see him like this.

Feeling more exhausted than ever in his life, Prussia steeled himself again to move, and this time it worked. His limbs made no sound, but felt like they were creaking, groaning from his stillness and his far, far too long life. Slowly, he brought himself across the kitchen, tossing the beer bottle into the sink, and made his way down the hall and into West’s room.

The door was closed. He hadn’t been able to look at the room inside since they took him away.

But now, he opened the door. The bed sheets were left neat and tidy, just the way West would have left them. Everything was perfectly in order, with hardly any dust anywhere from the lack of human presence in the room for the last few months.

Prussia made his way to the bed slowly, not the side that West had lain on the last time he saw him, but the other side, next to it. He didn’t bother to undress or prepare himself for bed before slipping under the covers. He lay flat on his back, feeling the cold sheets begin to warm up to him as he stayed there, completely still.

It was time, he thought with a weary, relieved sigh, and closed his eyes.

The sheets wouldn’t be warm for long.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry.
> 
> I don’t know why Ludwig died or how or what it means for the nation of Germany—really, this drabble doesn’t mean anything. I just woke up one morning with this realization that, while you often see fics of Germany dealing with Prussia’s death (for obvious reasons) you don’t really see it the other way ‘round (also for obvious reasons) and for some reason my brain decided it would be helpful to give me images of Prussia suffering emotionally that I felt compelled to write down and share. So I sat down, wrote this all out in one go, and this is what happened.


End file.
